Electrophoresis is a method for the analysis of proteins in body fluids and has proven to be very valuable in laboratory and clinical work. There have been a number of commercial instruments produced for relatively low resolution applications, in which the electrophoretic medium is a microporous plastic membrane or filter paper which permits resolution of perhaps five components in the material being analyzed. Much higher resolution and accordingly analysis of as many as fifteen components may be obtained utilizing a relatively large area of agarose gel slide which is subjected to electrophoresis under specific contolled conditions. Such a slide is formed of an aragose gel with a barbital buffer added. While measurements performed with these slides have shown excellent results in laboratory environments, in order to attain widespread clinical use, an apparatus for providing easy, economical and particularly accurate and reproducible results is required.
In electrophoresis, the initial step is to apply the sample material to the electrophorteic medium and allow the separation to take place by migration under the influence of an applied electric field. Thereafter the slide is fixed chemically, dried and subsequently read either directly or with appropriate densitometer devices. To obtain a practical migration apparatus, the device must be capable of obtaining accurate and highly reproducible results even when operated by relatively unskilled technicians. As above indicated, once the electrophoretic migration has taken place, the slide must be fixed, dried and stained to provide for interpretation and to provide a permanent record. The fixing is done with appropriate chemical baths in accordacne with standard techniques. Once the fixing has been completed, the slide must be dried prior to staining to enhance the contrast between the protein molecules and the background. One technique for drying the slide is to press the slide under absorbing pads with a weight of perhaps 1 kilogram to force excess liquid from the slide into the absorbing pad and thereafter to complete the drying process with an air dryer. This drying process takes about two hours. It will be appreciated that this process is awkward and difficult to use in service laboratories where routine electrophoresis testing is to be carried out both accurately and economically for a large number of samples.
It is therefore the primary object of the present invention to provide a drying station for electrophoresis slides, which will permit accurate, routine and economical drying of slides prior to staining and densitometer readout.